September 9, 2024
Aristotle: how people live together in communities
For Aristotle and many others, the key question is:
How should we live together in communities? How should we organize our communities?
But Weber tells us that science cannot answer questions about value:
Science can only tell us about the is, not the ought or should.
Is science irrelevant to politics?
Rainer Forst (reading for this week) argues:
Forst’s argument in brief:
power: “is the capacity of A to motivate B to think or do something that B would otherwise not have thought or done.”
justification: is a reason to motivate someone to adopt some behavior.
Justifications include key elements:
a value or values about what is good or desirable
factual claims about the state of the world
factual claims about what causes various phenomena
Values about what is desirable: Catholic Church and the sale of indulgences.
Factual claims to show values are relevant:
“You know, in New York, what’s happening with crime is it’s through the roof, and it’s called ‘migrant’ … They beat up police officers. You’ve seen that they go in, they stab people, hurt people, shoot people. It’s a whole new form, and they have gangs now that are making our gangs look like small potatoes.”
Claims about migrant crime used to invoke values of security; also to motivate people to vote for Trump.
factual claims to alter behavior:
factual claims about causes
How are justifications linked to power?
Power implicitly/explicitly involves justification to alter behavior.
Is armed robbery a use of power? What is the justification?
Does the power in armed robbery depend on the gun?
What happens to power when threats of violence do not deter people?
violence (for Forst) is when others are reduced to mere physical objects to be moved or destroyed. Violence might used in justifications for OTHERS to behave in a certain way, but the use of violence shows that A no longer can motivate a change in the behavior of B.
When A no longer attempts to motivate B to do something, it reflect a loss of power of A over B
the material capability for violence may be meaningless when it loses justification.
Bangladesh, August 2024
In two ways, justifications connected to value:
Forst defines:
domination: when justifications for power are hegemonic (crowd out others) by limiting the ability of others to question or challenge justifications by controlling information or using threats or violence.
critical theory principle (criteria for good vs. poor justifications):
“the acceptance of a justification does not count if the acceptance itself is produced by the coercive power which is supposedly being justified.”
If acceptance of justification is itself dependent on domination or using unjustified power, it is a poor justification.
Values about what is desirable: Catholic Church and the sale of indulgences.
Factual claims to show values are relevant:
factual claims to alter behavior: use of threats to get participation in mass rallies, for the illusion of support
factual claims about causes:
Petroleum companies spending money on sponsored research and advertising to undermine belief in climate change: uses power to secure acceptance of justification to not tax carbon
If we want to be given good justifications by others for power
We should also give good justifications to others.
If justification involves values and we have moral intuition that we deserve good justification… what is the role of facts?
Facts are relevant to:
If justifications can be factually interrogated for correctness and whether they are “proper” (good) justifications…
How do we do that?
Why is science the way?
We are not in a Cave.
We can certainly use our senses of perception.
What color are these fruits?